Want To Talk Salary Boost?

With the Brexit deadline now set for the end of January, experts predict language skills will soon become more desirable than ever. With this in mind, leading job search engine Adzuna has ranked each language spoken in the EU based on the average salary of advertised jobs listing the language as a requirement. 

The EU languages in order of value are: 

1. Maltese - £42,000
2. Danish - £36,854
3. Greek - £34,245
4. Czech - £32,695
5. Spanish - £31,422
6. German - £31,405
7. French - £31,364
8. Polish - £30,929
9. Dutch - £30,566
10. Portuguese - £30,219
11. Croatian - £29,000
12. Swedish - £28,913
13. Slovene - £28,150
14. Finnish - £27,878
15. Estonian - £27,833
16. Italian - £27,768
17. Bulgarian - £27,243
18. Latvian - £27,136
19. Hungarian - 26,442
20. Slovak - £25,626
21. Lithuanian - £24,039
22. Romanian - £21,405

Although competition is fierce with only 10 vacancies across the UK, jobs requiring Maltese as a spoken language command an average salary of £42,000 - almost £10,000 higher than the national average advertised salary of £34,095.

French, German and Spanish were found to be the most in-demand languages in the UK job market, with a collective 8,076 roles requiring these language skills. However, when it comes to earning potential Danish, Greek and Czech were all found to be higher earners.

The most common second languages of the active UK labour market are French with 3,164,682 speakers; German with 1,700,036; and Spanish with 1,494,070. The labour market is saturated with workers who can speak these languages, which may be an indicator of why the salaries do not rank as highly as other languages that are less common.

European language skills may see an increase in demand post-Brexit if the UK loses access to the single market and free movement of labour. This means it could be harder - or even less desirable - for EU citizens to work in the United Kingdom. Therefore, businesses that have multilingual workers may find it easier to secure contacts in the EU than companies that have less language diversity.